Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
Here’s a little story about why voting has consequences. In this case, yet another piece of moronic legislation from the Freedom…nope, I’m not calling them a name that they are obviously not. They have no intention of preserving freedom for anyone, they’re Luddites at best, and morons at worst, from now on I’ll write this to accurately describe the damage they’re causing, “Free Dumb Caucus.”
The narrative describes a situation that can arise in every classroom in America and the punishment that will follow if a teacher dares to help their students. These situations occur by the millions in American’s classrooms every year.
Teachers don’t get any input in scheduling, none. They just pick up their class list, ideally on the first day they return, but realistically, often after they’ve had a couple of days with the kids already. Yes, it is often a mess when scheduling takes place
I didn’t have a class list, but then again, in a small school, you don’t need one. If you teach U.S. History, you’re going to have all the juniors. Seventh-grade and eighth-grade math give themselves away in the title.
They had a schedule for us just moments before the buses arrived on the first day of school. There it was, fourth and fifth periods, eighth-grade math and eighth-grade social studies.
If you’ve never taught middle school kids, suffice it to say they have boundless energy, even more exponentially boundless hormones, and the attention span of a 12-second commercial, and it only gets worse the period before and the period after lunch. It was my reward for being able to handle them.
My room was rated by the Fire Marshall for 27 students maximum. They shoehorned 38 kids into that classroom. I joked with the admin that maybe we should install bunk desks to handle the overflow, but they didn’t laugh.
It wasn’t a punishment for me, but for the students. We didn’t have enough math books. We only had half the number of history books needed for the class. Yes, the admin attempted to hamstring me as best they could.
What they didn’t realize is that the freshman Algebra I teacher had an overabundance of textbooks, and I had access to both pre-algebra and the standard eighth-grade math books, not enough for all 38 kids, but enough if they were in different classes.
After a whip and a chair, lion-taming style opening day of class in both periods where I laid down the law with these kids, I came up with a plan. This class had driven their seventh-grade math teacher into a nervous breakdown and they thought they had a chance with me. Not quite. I informed them that, yes, there would be tears in this class, but none of them were coming from me.
That night at football practice, my mind was on those eighth graders.
I wrote a math skills assessment test that night at home and gave it to the class the next day. There were some natural breaks in their cognitive math abilities. A dozen of the kids scored high, and were ready for Algebra I, but no one had ever taught it at the junior level before. There were 15 students in the middle, and 11 that scored very low on the test.
On Wednesday I gave each student a textbook that fit their skill level and informed the class that I had broken the math class into three different levels, Algebra I, Pre-Algebra and Eighth-Grade Math. I checked with the other math teachers and explained my plan. They had no problem with it.
The kids learned to ignore me when I was working with another group. Each group received 10 to 15 minutes of direct instruction with a daily assignment and if time permitted, I went around the room to help them individually. The time flew by in that class.
For social studies, I wrote my own material. We had history one day, geography the next, current events, and world history. If they behaved that week, we had “Gross Out Fridays.” The Friday schedule was abbreviated with only 37-minute periods and an early 1:30 release in the afternoon.
Eighth graders love gruesome stories. So, on Friday’s they heard the story of Vlad the Impaler, or the exploits of the Huns, or maybe Aztec sacrifices.
The kids began to self-regulate, knowing that any acting up ended the Friday sessions and replaced them with a hefty batch of homework over the weekend.
I spent a ton of time at home grading all those math and history assignments, but the kids blossomed.
The only issue I had was with the administration. It was all the usual garbage. I hadn’t gone through channels, I hadn’t been approved, I hadn’t genuflected to them, it’s always the same.
Three of the students’ parents were board members. They had no problem with it, and when I mentioned the guff I was getting from above, they said a few words to the admin, and it stopped.
What’s the reason for this story?
House Bill 200 is the reason. If a teacher were to adapt to the needs of their students under this idiotic legislation, they would be terminated.
Here is the summary of HB200
AN ACT relating to education; clarifying procedures and requirements for school districts to provide parents notice of information regarding students; requiring school districts to publish and make materials available to parents; prohibiting school districts from requiring school district personnel and students to use a student’s preferred pronoun if the pronoun does not align with the student’s biological sex; requiring parental or guardian permission before instruction relating to diversity, equity or inclusion; authorizing school district personnel to opt out of mandatory trainings as specified; specifying disciplinary measures; providing for a cause of action; providing for a civil penalty; providing definitions; requiring reporting; and providing for an effective date.
As always, the devil is in the details. In the explanatory text below the summary, teachers will be required to publish an entire year of lessons plans before the first day of school, and those plans, materials, videos, field trips, and any other learning opportunity must be displayed on the district website, all integrated into state standards.
What’s the purpose of this? It’s another layer of harassment from the “Free Dumb Caucus” aimed at disrupting Wyoming public education.
How does this meet the unique needs of each child?
These clowns know nothing about teaching children. Many of them home-school their children to adhere to their extremist beliefs and protect them from the imagined liberal bastion of Wyoming K-12 schools. Their experience comes in canned instructional modules from right-wing curriculum vendors. The “page a day” they offer their children in lieu of an actual education is how they want to frame your local public school.
They refuse to recognize teachers as professionals and in their insanely driven agenda they’re doing everything they can to micromanage and destroy K-12 education. It’s not just in Wyoming, since the driving force for the “Free Dumb Caucus” comes from California, Texas and Arizona and has a nationwide goal of creating ignorant future generations.
Don’t let these people win. This will destroy your local school.
We have to put up with these clowns for this session and another one in 2026, but there is a primary election that summer. Vote them out in the Republican primary. The Republican primary is the only one that matters in Wyoming, the general election is just a rubber stamp of the primary.
How important is your child or your grandchild’s education? You wouldn’t buy a used car from these people, don’t let them mandate your children’s future.